On the fast track to sky-high prices

Can you believe that it was back in June 2009 that Southeastern introduced the UK’s first domestic high-speed train service … from Ashford to St Pancras International?

While there was delight after its introduction that the journey time was only 38 minutes compared with more than an hour on the ‘old school’ lines to London stations like Charing Cross and Victoria, the new ultra-fast service came at a price … basically, around a third more for a ticket.

And with inflation in the intervening years, that price (even if you buy in advance, travel off-peak or have some kind of railcard) has naturally risen – with the cost of an annual Ashford-St Pancras season ticket now a whopping £5,236.

And the cost of a peak-time While the skies were lit up with a double rainbow on Tuesday, the cost of rail travel in the UK, right, is less than heavenly day-return high-speed ticket between the two stations is now an eye-watering £66.60.

We mention this because one of the Nuts and Bolts team was at Ashford station recently, catching a train to Gatwick to fly off to Toulouse in southern France to see his brother.

In front of him in the queue for tickets at around 9am was a man buying two peak-day return tickets to St Pancras.

When the ticket seller told him the cost was £133.20, he replied: “How much?”

The ticket man then said if he could wait to catch a train after 9.30am the cost would be much cheaper, but the man’s wife said they needed to be in London by 10am so had no choice but to buy at that price, which they did.

Our N&B-er then commiserated with the couple about the high cost and explained he was flying to Toulouse in France from Gatwick that day and his return=flight ticket with Easyjet had cost him £70 – just £3.40 more than they were each paying for a short 60-mile ride up the line to London.

So on his round trip to France he was flying 1,050 miles (1hr 30mins), while they were doing merely a 120-mile round trip.

And, our man was guaranteed a seat on the plane in both directions, while that’s definitely not the case on our high-speed trains, which are so popular many passengers often have to stand.

We are sure Southeastern, who run the high-speed service, could come up with lots of reasons to defend this amazing disparity in trip costs, so we’ll just leave you to make up your own minds. Somewhere over the rainbow is … who knows where? Challock resident Martin Hadleigh took this delightful photograph of a double rainbow in the midst of last week’s strange weather mixture of sunshine, heavy rain and winds.

The unusual natural weather phenomenon occurred last Tuesday evening.

Mr Hadleigh said: “I took this picture from an upstairs window in my house at about 5.30pm.

“The heavens opened for about five minutes, and as the rain moved away this double rainbow appeared.

“Plus, you could still see the rain falling.”

We were going to explain what causes a double rainbow, but as the answer would take up the rest of the space in this week’s paper let’s just admire the sight.